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Hamish Gill, resident crackpot over at 35MMC.com recently sent out a call for submissions for a new series of articles over on Twitter. The idea was simple: five photos taken on a film camera accompanied by ~350 words.

Having kicked myself for not having beaten him to the idea, I did the next best thing – I stole it from him in the spirit of collaboration (with his permission, of course).

So, with my confession out of the way, I’d like to introduce you to the first #5FramesWith post here on EMULSIVE.

About 5 Frames…

Hamish and I will be posting the series on our respective websites. Posts over on 35MMC will be focused on photos taken with a single camera and lens, while posts here on EMULSIVE will be focused on the film used. If all goes well, you should see four #5Frames posts per week, two here on EMULSIVE and two over at 35MMC.

I’ll be filling in the first few posts myself but would really like to see submissions coming from all of you out there in the film photography community. Even with the same gear and film, styles and results vary greatly from photographer to photographer, so there’s no problem if you want to post about a film that’s already been covered before. Obviously if you’ve already submitted a gear-focused piece to Hamish, you’re welcome to tweak that as a film-focused piece for submission to EMULSIVE.

Speaking about submissions to EMULSIVE, I would like your photos to have come from the same roll and camera/lens combination. This helps when it comes to showing how a film reacts to alternate development methods and push/pull processing, etc.

Photos should be paired with ~350 words which talk about the qualities or aspects of the film you like or dislike, details about how you developed the film or what you’ll be trying next time. It’s all about the beauty of the medium, so feel free to stray away from objective analysis, if that’s your thing.

As with Hamish’s first post in the series, I’ll let my first post act as an example:

I often find my favourite photographs come from unexpected outings with my camera. In particular, coffee and lunch breaks. I carry a camera daily and it’s always hanging off my shoulder or wrist when I’m out and about, even if only for a few minutes.

The frames from this roll came from one such outing and we’re from my 23rd roll (yes, I count) of medium format Kodak Portra 400. I’ll be the first to admit that this is far from my favourite film stock but still, rooting through my archive to find suitable photographs from this roll, I realise that I have perhaps not given this film stock the justice it deserves.

The day was grey and gloomy; and it had just finished raining a couple of hours earlier. I wasn’t expecting much from the roll and whilst not all are what I’d call keepers, there were a handful of standout frames. In this dark light, Portra 400 still provides a rich tonality and I love the saturation. I like the final shot especially. As ever, Portra’s 400’s grain is pin-sharp and unobtrusive. Colour negative film might never be able to provide the clarity of slide film but with that cost, you get something that slide film can’t deliver as much of: flexibility.

All of the photographs you see here were taken with a Hasselblad 2000 series medium format camera as 6×6. The lens was my trusty Carl Zeiss Planar F 80/2.8.

~ EM

Want to submit your own 5 Frames...?

Go right ahead, submissions are open! Get your 5 frames featured on by submitting your 350+ word article by either using this Google form or by sending an email via the contact link at the top of the page.

This series is produced in conjunction with Hamish Gill's excellent 35mmc.com. Head on over to read the other half of these stories there.

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